1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a resin molded article provided with a stitch pattern and a method of producing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of vehicle interior members (such as an instrument panel and a floor console) disposed in a passenger compartment of an automobile or the like are intended to improve the texture of their design surfaces by seaming a plurality of skin materials, made of genuine leather or a resin sheet molded in imitation of genuine leather, with a thread and disposing them on a surface of the base member of, for instance, the instrument panel.
There are various methods of seaming skin pieces of vehicle interior members, and, for example, there is a method called single-stitch. In this method, as seen from FIG. 12A, two sheets of the skin material 10 are seamed together with a thread 12 in the end edge portions in an overlapped state, and one of the skin material 10 is folded back at this seamed portion and then, as seen from FIG. 12B, the resulted triple folded skin material 10 is further seamed together with the thread 12. As seen from FIG. 12B, on the design surface 14 of the skin material 10 seamed by single-stitch, a stitch pattern is made so that a stitch (out-stitch) 18 appears on the upper side of the skin material 10 along the joint 16 of the two sheets of the skin materials 10 and so that a stitch (in-stitch) 20 slightly appears from the joint 16 formed like a step.
In addition, in a method called double-stitch, two sheets of the skin materials 10 are, as seen from FIG. 12A, seamed together with a thread 12 in the end edge portions in an overlapped state, and both skin materials 10 are folded back away from each other at this seamed portion and, then as seen from FIG. 13, the double overlapped skin materials 10 are respectively seamed together with the thread 12. As illustrated in FIG. 13, on the design surface 14 of the skin material 10 seamed by double-stitch, a stitch pattern is made so that a pair of stitches (out-stitch) 18 appear on both sides of the joint 16 of the two sheets of the skin materials 10 and along the joint 16 and further so that a stitch (in-stitch) 20 slightly appears from the concave joint 16.
However, since seaming the skin materials 10 requires cost and effort, such a vehicle interior member that has a stitch pattern produced by molding is proposed as disclosed in Patent Document 1 below. When producing such a stitch pattern by molding, injection molding or the like is carried out using a molding die having concave and convex portions in a shape of a reversed stitch pattern on the mold surface, thereby integrally forming a stitch pattern on the surface of the resultant skin material.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (Kokai Publication) No. 2010-184487
In the method of producing a member provided with a stitch pattern disclosed in Patent Document 1, stitches of the stitch pattern are formed from a part of the resin material that forms a skin material. Accordingly, the stitches naturally has the same color as the surface of the skin material and are thus inconspicuous, and the problem is that the stitch pattern does not look like genuine stitch patterns.